The invention relates to a method of positioning heads for reading and/or writing information, which heads in turn consecutively follow recording tracks, which tracks are substantially parallel to each other and make an angle with the longitudinal axis of a recording medium in the form of a tape, and are respectively controlled in position by means of a first and a second transducer in a direction transverse to the direction of said recording tracks.
Such a method is known from Netherlands Patent Application No. 7409513, which has been laid open for public inspection. In apparatus in which information is recorded in adjacent tracks on a record carrier and is subsequently read, in particular apparatus for recording and reproducing video signals of the type in which the record carrier is passed around a drum in accordance with a helix and is scanned by a rotary head, it is essential that the read head precisely follows the desired track during reading. This is the more so as, in order to increase the information density, the distance between the tracks is constantly reduced and the tracks are even written directly against each other without any intermediate spacing, while at the same time the width of the tracks is reduced continually and track widths of approximately 30 .mu.m are already used, the trend being to reduce these already extremely small track widths even further. A slight deviation of the read head from the correct track then immediately result in impermissible cross-talk of information from the adjacent track.
In accordance with this known method pilot signals written in the tracks are read and used for controlling the position of the reproducing head relative to the centre of the track being read by the relevant reproducing head.
A drawback of this known method is that the positional error may correspond to a full track or, in cases that the pilot signals within a group of tracks can be distinguished from each other, a number of tracks without this being detected. When the known method is used it may happen that a reproducing head is controlled to the centre of a wrong track.